by Alex Simard, Inside Investigator
July 14, 2026
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong is warning that the Paramount Skydance Corporation’s purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery Inc will have a “devastating” impact on movie theaters. He joined a multi-state lawsuit against the merger on Monday, July 13.
“This is an unlawful merger that will have devastating consequences for families and people across Connecticut and across the country,” Tong said at a press conference about this merger.
Warner Bros. and Paramount are two of the five largest movie distributors in the country. Together, they account for 27% of the market, including 30% of “anticipated blockbuster films with wide audiences and large production budgets,” the press statement about this lawsuit states.
“Five major studios account for 95% of box office revenue, and when they merge, only four will remain, and they will have a huge piece of that as well,” Tong said at the press event. “This is going to be bad for us on price.”
If the merger goes through, Paramount will take on $78 billion in debt to purchase Warner Bros., and its junk-status credit rating will drop.
“This will result in a long-term… cutting of movie theaters, because they will put so much pressure on them that they will struggle to stay open and provide that service,” Tong said.
Movie theaters are already under stress in Connecticut. Dozens of movie theaters have closed in the state in the last five years.
“A significant percentage of a movie ticket goes back to a distributor,” Peter Gistelinck is the executive director of the Avon Theatre Film Center, an independent, nonprofit movie theater, said. “The money is all in the popcorn… So commercial, especially commercial movie theaters, are struggling.”
Gistelnick said that nonprofit theaters are in a slightly different position. Even though they are always “surviving,” they have a donor base that helps keep them afloat. The Avon Theater Film Center has about 3,000 households that are supporting them.
Gistelnick said he is following the merger “from the sidelines,” so he did not want to comment on it, nor the multistate lawsuit, directly. However, he did say, “It’s important that an independent movie theater can remain independent in the sense that we can choose the distributor, we can choose the movies. If you have mergers left and right going on, which is fine. But what you don’t want is, at the end of the day, you only have one or two distributors that you have to go to in order to get your content.”
Having multiple distributors also allows theaters to maintain “independent relationships,” he said.
“Currently, Paramount and Warner Bros. compete fiercely to create and distribute new, different, and innovative film and television content to American viewers. To promote their films, they negotiate with thousands of movie theaters across the country and bargain with those theaters to secure the most coveted screens and calendar slots,” the press release said. “Paramount’s proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. will end this competition, threatening viewers with higher prices, the decline of theatrical exhibition of films, and a reduction in the variety, quality, and amount of content distributed.”
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